Why do Common Cold Symptoms Seem to get Worse at Night?

Indeed, lying down or being up and about has little to do with symptoms getting worse at night. I have a cold that has been going for about a week, and like another commenter above, every night at almost exactly 9 p.m., the cough suddenly gets much worse. For the last few days, I have been almost cough free during the daytime, but 9 p.m. comes and bang, the cough returns.

@anon12916: Actually it's the opposite. The body's natural defenses are heightened, and histamine levels are higher. This means an increased inflammation and immune response, which means worse symptoms because the body is fighting harder.

Yes, everyone likes to consume a glass of boiling water. In fact I might go do that now, since drinking boiling water is such a revolutionary idea!

Nope. My cold symptoms *always* gets worse at night, whether I'm lying down or not. I am nocturnal, so it's not just indicative of my body needing rest. I feel fine until 9pm or so at night, no matter how long I've been awake for, then my nose stuffs up, my throat aches and my fever returns.

When I am sick, sometimes I will wake up in the middle of the night and feel like I have gotten much worse. My throat will burn, my head will ache, and my muscles will feel like they are made of dried up leather.

But it helps to have a glass of water next to the bed. You should be staying hydrated anyway, but the water also helps to refresh you a little when you are jarred out of your sleep. It is not a perfect solution, but it helps a little.

My little boy is three years old and he has a cough and a fever and a runny nose and headaches a lot but it gets really bad at nighttime. What can I do? I have tried everything.

I have a cold now. Yesterday at around 4:30 after school I had a fever. This was probably due to the fact I was running around like a loon in P.E. I assume activity heats the body and something retains the heat. that's why I seem to have a fever after exercise. not sure though.

Um, prone vs. lying? Prone means the same thing as lying down. I am with the immune system ramping up and producing more mucus. Think it is more likely the cause.

Cortisol levels drop at night and then your immune system amps up to repair the body and fight disease, causing more mucus to be produced.

Every time I had pneumonia, the flu or cold, I always felt worse at night, very often a lot worse. Right now it's 3:30 am and I'm having a cold. My nose is more congested (during the day it wasn't that bad) and I have overall worse feeling.

My understanding is that it is the action of the immune system working that is causing the symptoms in the first place, so to say that symptoms worsen at night due to the immune system working less just doesn't make sense.

However, one thing I do know is that your body does most of its healing during the night, so it would make sense to say that symptoms worsen at night due to an increase in immune activity. H

I have always experienced an increase in cold symptoms and or fever between 4:00pm and 5 p.m. my entire life.

Also, I have had to drag myself to the gym at 4:00 p.m. all the years I exercised.I think it has to do with our biological day clock. Certain hormones are peaking at different times, i.e., highest sex drive upon awakening. Lowest afternoon. (I'm 67 so factor that in.)

Anyway, others have told me the same thing about colds and fevers.

I have a totally opposite theory. I think that during the day stress hormones are up, and like taking prednisone and other steroids, it depresses the immune system. When you're relaxing there's less need for stress hormones and your immune system response is allowed to rear its head.

I read that it's the immune system's activity that causes most of the symptoms of a cold, and people with more active immune systems will feel worse than someone with a less active immune system.

Lookin up is the immune system more active at night or day will give some links that show an experiment where it's proposed that the immune system is more active at night.

When I have a cold, like right now, I start feeling worse at almost precisely 4 p.m. every night (it is now 4:21 which is why I'm here). There is something to this and I haven't really found a reasonable explanation yet. I've noticed this my entire life, since I was a kid. It doesn't matter whether I'm horizontal or vertical. Ach, fever goes up too.

Use a neti pot with saline to clear your sinuses while taking a nice steamy shower right before bed and you'll feel so much better!

This is just an off-hand thought, but maybe the increased cough reflex at night is instinctual to protect people from drowning in their own phlegm at night while they sleep.

I don't know -- I've just had a cold for about a week now, and i just got a fever.

my symptoms are coughing, chills, and I'm tired! it's just a 100.4 fever. at night i cough a lot and it keeps me up for hours! What is going on?

I caught a cold one week ago - not severe but for the past four nights, I've started coughing and my nose starts running at 11 p.m., almost like clockwork and then until 2 a.m. when I can finally fall asleep. I wake up at about and the same thing until about 10 a.m. What the hell is this?

My cold symptoms become worse in the evening before I even go to bed. I start sneezing and my nose starts to run.

I actually go for the argument that says the body's natural defenses are down. Sounds more convincing than my initial response: the force of the moons affect on earth and its alignment with my bed, pulls all the crap out of me at night and makes me sicker thus making it highly impossible for me to feel great about finally going to bed after a long day at work......

Cannot buy the prone vs lying argument. When I sleep in the day, the coughing isn't nearly as apparent as when I'm asleep in the night. And as to the circadian thing... well if I go to bed at 10pm, I hr later I start a coughing fit. The same as if it's 11, 12am or even 3:30am. Not while I'm awake.

In the day, the symptoms are usually just about the same lying or standing.